Science: Better Bomb Detection

The bitter and continuing argument about the possibility of detecting
clandestine bomb tests took a turn last week in favor of the
optimiststhose scientists who believe a detection network to be
feasible. The U.S. Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects
Agency issued a four-page booklet stating that "there may be
substantially fewer earthquakes that produce signals equivalent to an
underground nuclear explosion of given yield than had been expected."
All by itself, that brief statement represented quite a switch; the
Defense Department has usually favored the attitude that secret Russian
underground tests could not be distinguished from natural earthquakes
except by dozens...